Graffiti fight goes high-tech, countywide

The scourge of the urban landscape, the adolescent tagger with a can of spray paint, is about to meet law enforcement, equipped and unified as never before.

County Supervisor Greg Cox and other officials announced Thursday that an innovative anti-graffiti program pioneered in Escondido involving GPS cameras, computer databases and interagency cooperation is going countywide.

The aim is to discourage graffiti vandals, make parents pay for the damage, which collectively runs into the millions, and reduce the taxpayer costs of erasing and prosecuting their misdeeds.

Here’s how the program works: Residents can report graffiti to their city’s hotline or a new universal number, 211, or online at

211sandiego.org. Public works employees, not sworn law enforcement officers, will respond. They will photograph the scrawl, using special cameras with time stamps and GPS devices to record location. Color-coded placards will indicate the graffiti size, used in computing the cost of repainting. The images go to Graffiti Tracking of Long Beach, a private company that keeps a database and analysts to identify patterns.

Graffiti sprayers tend to be juveniles – 80 percent – have characteristic signatures, and act in patterns that can be mapped. Law enforcement, including school resource officers, can track down the culprits.

The databank of repeated instances empowers the District Attorney’s Office to prosecute 50 counts or more, not just single instances. The number of counts can be reduced in a plea bargain and incarceration avoided, but restitution in full may still be required.

This program was pioneered in Escondido three years ago and was soon adopted in Oceanside and in sheriff’s patrol areas. Now, it’s going countywide.

Richard O’Donnell likes the approach. He’s deputy director of maintenance and operations for Escondido, where graffiti instances have dropped 40 percent and one less paint crew is needed.

Jerry Sanders is sold. The mayor and former police chief says graffiti costs San Diego $2 million a year.

Victor Barr likes it. The deputy district attorney says prosecutors have easily obtained 100 plea bargains so far. Only last week did the first trial come – guilty on all counts.

So do Cox Communications, AT&T and Sempra Energy, which paid for the $1,400 cameras.

This is an 18-month pilot program. The database contract for covering the remainder of the county is $96,000 a year, to be split 10 ways.

“You spray, you pay,” is the way one sheriff’s deputy describes the program. That’s not entirely accurate: If junior sprays, it’s increasing likely he will be caught and the parents will pay – in installments if necessary.

Supervision and accountability begin at home. That’s a precept behind this program. That’s the way it should be.